The Quiet Revolution
by Dr. Agent
Summary: It lived and died utterly fruitless.


Stop, it's too late.  
I'm feeling frustrated.  
I see no sign of fortress.  
I see no sign of fortress.  
-Pinback, "Fortress"

-

Monday morning there's a rush of patients. Scully's picking up bits of the chatter as she idly looks at the sign-in sheet. As she scans, she catches a name she recognizes. "Mulder, Fox W. - In Route". There's a clatter of plastic and metal near the entrance. Her eyes dart to the source. There he is, being wheeled in among a heard of EMTs and nurses. The word "impossible" shoots into her mind. She forgets all the other patients as the clipboard falls. Later she might feel bad about neglecting her duties, but in this moment only one person mattered.

Opposed to Utah, she had hung around DC. Her first job at the District's morgue was escrow, she told herself. It proved too familiar to the old haunts. After a month in the fridge she went an interviewed at Georgetown University Hospital. Lucky for her, they had just lost one of their ER doctors. Dr. Scully was finally going to live up to the title, she decides. She's washing her hands of the dead.

Boring is what it was. People are rude and average, simple and un-mutated. The majority were ungrateful for her help, for saving their life. Just another bill to pay. They look at her, not as Mulder once did, but as if they are humoring her. As if she was a blood pressure machine in Walmart. They nod, they say "yes," and they don't question.

She doesn't know if she hates it or not, it's just different.

Every once-in-a-while he would call her. Late at night the phone would ring.

"Scully," he'd say slowly, testing the water.

"Hey, Mulder," she would finally reply. Her heart beats deep and she smiles because she feels alive.

The conversations were brief; something about a corpse or disease, a "where did you put the cartography table?"

There would be awkward breaths where she could feel him wanting to ask, "how are you?"

He never did.

Seeing him on that gurney, with his eyes closed and breathing shallow, was a surprise. She felt thunder inside her, startlingly seismic. It was in that instant that she wanted to tell him everything he wanted to ask but was afraid to. That she missed him everyday and worried about him just as much, if not more so. That she wanted to know if he was safe and taking care of himself, at least as much as he did when she was around. That she hoped every time the phone rang it would be him, and how weird it feels to not say "Mulder, it's me." That at night, lying in bed, she thinks about the fact that he still has her key and she will never change her locks. That she still glances at the tabloids full of monsters and that she hasn't stopped loving him.

But that's not important right now. She frantically rushes over to him and runs with the gurney, pressing her fingers into his neck and lifting his eyelids. Hoping to God that he just fell down the stairs or fainted. Something light and shakable.

But there's blood on the sheet and his pulse is threading.

She looks up, yells to a nurse, "what happened here?"

The nurse says in a rush that he's been shot. That they're rushing him into surgery. As they break through the last set of doors, Dr. Otis rushes up, saying that he'll handle it.

"He's an agent," Scully tells him.

"I know," the doctor says. "The room's already prepped."

"But I'm his doctor," she blurts out, but the gurney's being pulled past her, into the bay, and the doors close. She is left alone in the hallway.

"I'm his doctor," she echoes. A still and sterile silence reigns. She walks to the waiting room.

Their farewell plays in her head. Standing in her hallway, he had come to confront her about the voicemail she had left. The one where she was curt and cold. The one where she said she was resigning. His face was vacant as she stumbled with her words. "I just don't think I can do this anymore," she said. He had held out his hand.

"It was a pleasure working with you, Scully." He then turned and walked away.

She comes to see that hallways are home to goodbyes.

Her chest is throbbing, almost visibly. She's taken of her lab coat and jacket, pacing back and forth. She called in and got one of the doctors to cover her shift. Three hours she's been waiting. The time has been filled with imaginings and curiosities of the situation, hopes that he could feel her willing him to live, that he could hear her voice, that he knew she was near.

Scully knows she is a deserter. What if she had been there, at his side? What would she have done?

She didn't have to turn away from him like that, just because she left the Bureau.

The occasional phone call and her workaholic mentality have been her saving grace since she'd left him. Considerable time has been spent fighting her misgivings because she thought the best thing was to leave and that Mulder would be fine without her, maybe better. She had refused to imagine what she would do when the guilt hit her. But she knows what she is doing now. She is drowning, suffocating, bleeding out on to the floor.

God, she feels so empty.

Soon after Dr. Otis breaks through the door, wiping sweat from his brow. "Dr. Scully?"

She nods and asks, "how is he?" He sighs, formulating his words. Her lips part, her eyes widen.

"He's going to make it."

There's a dull ringing in her ears from the roar of relief. "When can I see him?" she inquires with urgency.

"Now, if you want; I didn't know you're his doctor." he replies.

She grabs her lab coat, and puts it on as she goes. "Room 308," he calls as she rushes down the hall.

When she gets there, the nurse is checking his IV. She snaps her head in Scully's direction, but her alarm is settled when she sees her badge. "Be easy, Doc," the nurse tells her.

She doesn't hear. Her eyes are trained on Mulder's form. She slides the chair to his bedside, scooping his hand into her own. Her thumb makes small circles on the back of his hand.

"Just like old times," he says.

Her head jerks up and over. When she meets his eyes her emotions dig into her, and she chokes on a sob. "Mulder," she manages, "God, I'm so sorry." Her hands slip off of his.

"It's not your fault," he whispers, "that you wanted to leave."

His hand raises to her face, the fingertips barely grazing her cheek as a tear falls. Her departure was a quiet revolution, it seems, that will live and die utterly fruitless.

She knows that within her forces laid a flaw.

"It's okay," he tells her. "I understood."

She cries, because the fact remains. She doesn't know what she was fighting for. Why did she do this to him? Is it selfish? What was she trying to prove, to him or the FBI?

"I understand," he pleads.

In the haze of the hospital room, the clarity to respond escapes her.

-

**AN**: Think _Fight the Future_ without the bees, and Scully deciding to call him instead. I believe Scully really would have left.


End file.
